Jax guides resurgence of blighted Lafayette Marketplace

Outdoor gear company luring farmers market and eclectic mix of retail

Manuel Estela floats concrete on an awning while doing construction on the exterior of a building in the Lafayette Marketplace on Thursday.
(
JEREMY PAPASSO
)

LAFAYETTE -- Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of retail torpor, Plaza Lafayette is being reborn as a shopping center with new energy, a new name, new direction -- and perhaps most important -- new tenants.

Plans for the vacancy-plagued building at 400 W. South Boulder Road include a brewery, a hearth and patio store, a French bakery, a restaurant featuring international cuisine, and a farmers market.

Jax Mercantile President Jim Quinlan, whose outdoor gear company bought the 93,000-square-foot center for $2.8 million last year and opened up a farm products storefront at its west end, said by summer he hopes to have the entire center leased.

"It will look dramatically different in that it will not be surrounded by empty spaces but by full spaces," Quinlan said Thursday of the center he recently renamed Lafayette Marketplace. "We're starting to reach the critical mass -- there is a lot of traffic in that area."

He hopes to bring that traffic to Lafayette Marketplace to patronize a new array of shops and restaurants along with a few establishments with familiar names.

Quinlan said future tenants -- including 503 Cafe, Front Range Brewing Co. and perhaps a long-awaited Cheese Importers store -- would bring an eclectic and enticing flavor to the shopping center. They would join Lafayette Music and The Unseen Bean coffee shop, both of which opened at the marketplace recently.

"I see it as an extension of Public Road," Quinlan said. "It's not the mass national retailers -- it's more local and eclectic."

Farmers market to run Sundays

Part of the change at Lafayette Marketplace, he said, will be a weekly farmers market in a parking lot behind the strip mall. A covered pavilion built of beetle-kill pine for live music acts will anchor the area, and Kelly Williams, who has operated the Louisville Farmers Market for the last six years, will also run the Jax Farmers Market in Lafayette.

The market is scheduled to launch May 12 and run every Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., through the end of September.

Williams said she's hoping to draw some of the thousands of congregants who attend the nearby Flatirons Community Church every weekend.

Quinlan said the rear parking lot is perfect for a farmers market and pedestrian plaza.

"It's quiet, it's away from the main road," he said. "You'll feel safe walking around there with kids rather than being next to a busy road."

Ado Salguero, owner of 503 Cafe, said Quinlan's bold vision and financial commitment to the marketplace -- including a $500,000 investment to fix the air-conditioning, patch and seal a dilapidated parking lot and make other improvements to the building -- kept him in the city.

"I was shopping my restaurant to different cities -- Broomfield and Louisville, mainly," Salguero said, as a bustling lunch business filled his dining room on Public Road on Thursday. "Eight p.m. shows up, and these streets are like a ghost town. Jim (Quinlan) is working so hard to improve -- and make upscale -- his strip mall."

He hopes he will be able to team up with the Front Range Brewing Co. to provide food for the brewery's customers while also offering salsa dancing at his new location, creating more of a nighttime hot spot.

'A sigh of relief'

Vicki Trumbo, head of the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, said her office "breathed a sigh of relief" after learning that Quinlan had purchased the building, which had been foreclosed upon early last year. She said the shopping center has suffered prominent vacancies for much of the past decade.

"Jim Quinlan is a phenomenal businessperson," she said. "The challenge is going to be getting people to pay attention and realize the whole center has changed."

Jax, which also has a 37,000-square-foot store at 900 S. U.S. 287, was named business of the year by the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce at an awards dinner Thursday night.

Lafayette Music owner Mark Benassi, who in November took over the space once occupied by Vision Quest, said he appreciates that Quinlan has a strong background in retail and can understand the challenges business owners like him face every day.

"He's definitely putting the time, money and energy into making it happen," Benassi said of Quinlan. "That makes so much difference."

A crew worked outside his store Thursday, making repairs to the awning.

Quinlan said he hopes Lafayette Marketplace can start a new chapter where its retail spaces stay full and the shopping center becomes a destination.

He is putting the Jax muscle behind a couple of new openings in the marketplace, including a hearth and patio store, which will occupy part of the space once taken up by The Bingo Mine. He's also in early talks with Cheese Importers, which owned the shopping center for years before running into trouble with it, to finally bring a storefront specialty cheese pantry to Lafayette Marketplace.

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